- This topic has 8 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 2 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
Hello,
My name is Alex, and I currently live in Stafford, Virginia, which is a little south of Washington DC.
My wife and I have been reselling on eBay for almost 3 years now, but I still very much feel like a beginner.
Here is a link to our store if you are interested: http://stores.ebay.com/rigbysregalresale
We started in Denver, Colorado, but moved in late 2016 to where we are now for work. I currently work about 50 hours per week at my day job then spend a lot of my extra time working on eBay at home.
We have 2 kids (as of the 16th of last month!) and my wife is a full-time stay at home mom. She does most of the pictures and editing the pictures, while I do the research and listing.
We used to be a lot more into hard goods, but we have had a hard time sourcing that kind of stuff since we moved to Virginia. It seems all the thrift stores up here are really pricey and the Goodwill pound store is really skimpy on hard goods, so we’ve had to focus a lot on shoes, clothes, and hats. We still get hard goods as much as we can, but its not nearly what it was while we were in Colorado. We very much want to go back, and hope to do eBay full time sometime in the next few years.
Jay and Ryanne always say that 500 items in your store is the target. We blew past that long ago and are up to around 1,350 items, but we just aren’t seeing that much income from it, so I feel like I must be doing something wrong. Either not sourcing good enough items, not pricing them well, or screwing up my listings somehow. If anyone has any advice, I’d appreciate it greatly.
For reference, here are my average net profits for the last 3 years:
2017: $773.58
2016: $856.77
2015: $528.76
(this is net profit after cost of goods, shipping costs, eBay & PayPal fees, storage fees, business related purchases, etc. Basically after everything but taxes).Also, if anyone knows of a good auction house in Northern Virginia (that they don’t mind sharing), I’d appreciate the tip! I’ve never been to an auction but after hearing Jay and Ryanne talk about them so much I really want to try it! (also for parents who go to auctions do you take your kids?)
I’ve been lurking on the forum for a while, but haven’t really posted much. I’m going to try really hard to be more active around here. I love the community here!
Sorry for the wall of text! If anyone in the area wants to meet up for lunch or whatever let me know!
-
Are those average net profits per year? I hope they are per month or week!
Your store looks fine to me. Great photos.
-
-
Hi, Alex. Full disclosure: I’m a part timer so I don’t have the experience of volume, but I have been buying and selling on eBay for over 20 years so I think I know a good listing when I see it. I agree with Sonia – the pictures look great. I’ve been looking at your items trying to pick apart your listings but I’m not having any luck. I’d say you’re doing everything right, I don’t see any balls being dropped. Overall your store is a class act – very professional.
Since J&R turned their blog into a multi-page forum, sometimes things that are posted off the main page aren’t viewed much. I know you just posted this today and you may get more responses eventually, but I would recommend posting on the main weekly Episode page using Jay’s “post your numbers” format and ask there for some more critiques on your store and you will get some ideas from different perspectives. Do it early in the week for maximum exposure to the collective.
Lastly, you’ll see I’m close by in DC, Southeast to be exact. But I just moved here this past summer and again I’m just part time and I have not been to any auctions yet. (I worked here for a while years ago but lived in Annapolis so I would go to markets and auctions on the Eastern Shore.) I would just do a google search or even yellow pages, plus there are probably some in the area that are online. I do have long and varied experience with auctions having been into antiques, picking, and scavenging on the side for 20 years before eBay and I would not recommend taking kids. There’s too much going on and you need to be able to concentrate and focus on the bidding during the auction, and then checking out after and getting your stuff and packing up can be a zoo. The best auctions for buying are the weekday auctions anyway, and they’re all business and would not appreciate the kids.
-
Whew! Glad those are per month.
Now, I see you have 1366 items in your store and in the past 3 months, you have sold 148. That’s a 12-week sell through rate of 10%, which makes your weekly sell-through rate less than 1%. That’s a little on the low side. I think that at a minimum you’d want to be at least 1-2% sell through per week, with some weeks up to 4 or 5%. Some people go much higher than that, but from what I’ve observed of people at least roughly following the J&R model, 2% is fairly typical.
So why isn’t it higher? ah. that’s the tough question. How often are you listing? Many people seem to see more sales when they are actively listing.
I think you’re harris tweed mens blazer is overpriced. I know some HT sells for a lot, but most of it seems to sell under $100. Plus your photo of the back of the blazer shows that the vent is all stretched out. That is something I learned to watch out for on blazers and dresses/skirts. I had two Jos A Banks Harris Tweed jackets a month or so ago, and I was only able to get 45 and 65 for them b/c they were a very large size – all the rest were going for $35-40. I’m no expert on this, it’s just that I recently discovered that not all HT is gold.
Etienne Aigner shoulder bag – do you have some way of telling if it’s vintage or not. The new EA stuff made in China is not worth much, but this one looks like it MAY be vintage 80s, and if it is, you should put that in the title. If not, lower the price. EA just isn’t what it used to be.
FLorsheim imperial wingtip brown – also seem overpriced given the comps and the fact that the heel has a lot of wear.
Fur trench coat – ???? That fur coat is not a trench coat. I have never seen a fur trench coat. You don’t want people coming to your listing looking for a trench coat.
Angelique shirt – it’s cool, but $65 cool? Not sure. Now, if you are doing “price high and wait” – remember that you may have to wait for a very long time, esp for vintage clothing. And so you need to build out your bread and butter items that sell a little more quickly. Or increase your inventory by a lot more. Remember, J&R didn’t start out as “price high and wait” – they were selling stuff for 9.99, and slowly worked up.
Pelle Studio leather jacket – this is not a trench coat :). Gotta remove that term. I have not had good luck with non-big-name leather jackets. And even with fairly big name leather jackets, it’s been tough.
SAS black shoes – $69 is too high. I’m lucky if I can sometimes get $44 for those – depends on the size. I know you have best offer, but for something like this that is almost a commodity on ebay, better to be closer to the actual expected selling price.
OK, overall your store looks fantastic and you have really nice items. I just think there is a significant portion of items that are priced too high (but also a whole lot that are not). So you might consider putting some items on sale to get things moving.
Once you’ve gotten the steady income level you want, then you can add more “price high and wait” items.
Just my 2 cents.
-
@sonia – On the trench coat issue – I must admit, for all the clothes I have online, I know next to nothing about fashion or clothing styles. I thought a trench coat just referred to any coat that was long enough to come down to mid-thigh or knee or so. If these aren’t trench coats, what are they? I suppose each one could probably be labeled as a different style of coat, and I don’t want to ask you to fix every one of my listings, but do you maybe know of any resources where I could learn about different coat styles (or really fashion styles in general)? Honestly if it isn’t a t-shirt or denim, I’m out of my depth.
I had suspected I might be pricing things a bit high. Every thing I post, I search for sold items, and look for similar items in comparable condition, but I do tend to list on the higher end of the comparables (ex. if they sell in similar condition for 20-50, I’m likely to list at 50 and hope for an offer). Maybe I will try running a sale on some of my stuff for 20-25% off to see if things move a little more quickly. If I see a noticeable uptick in sales in a couple of months, that would be a good indicator that I am pricing things too high.
Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate the help!
-
whew! Glad you weren’t insulted by my comments. Sometimes comments I write very late at night that I think are funny don’t seem as funny during the light of day. 🙂
Anyway, I can’t think of any clothing terminology resource other than google. Like if you type “types of coats” you’ll get charts with pictures of many different types of coats. But I just did that, and there are way too many there than you need to know. Most coats are just “coat”. The special kind of coats to know are pea coat, duffle coat, trench coat. Sometimes swing coat – but that’s more advanced :). And for men, overcoat. you can google all of these to learn more about them.
So, to summarize, if you have a terminology question, just google “types of [coats/dresses/necklines/skirts/hems/shirts]”.
-
-
-
Did I mention that you have to stop using “trench coat” so much?? 🙂
-
Hi Alex –
Just last month, another seller came on the forum to ask how he could increase sales much in the way that you have. I thought that the ideas people offered were good for any seller. Perhaps you should check on this link and see if any of it applies to your store:
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.